site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think there's a lot of stupid stuff happening in this article, but this may be the most egregious:

Whites of all economic classes are being displaced or prevented from moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Smart, ambitious, young whites are the ones who are hit hardest, and that’s traditionally who you want as a revolutionary class.

I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face that smart, ambitious young people of any color face any truly objectionable obstacles to living a life of choice and value. This is probably one of my biggest annoyances with grievance culture and identitarianism generally: it is a philosophy of total Nietzschean ressentiment, a gospel of pure unanchored envy. "I want more, I deserve more" is a whinge that is just totally hollow coming out of the mouth of anyone with an IQ over, say, 95. There are ample opportunities to be pursued; people just don't want to bear the associated costs. They want things handed to them. Put every single white person into North America and Europe, expel everyone darker than Sardinian fisherman, and I would expect everyone to quickly settle to within a stone's throw of the socioeconomic strata they occupied previously. Nobody is keeping you down, but you.

And sure--anti-white racism is real, and can be every bit as virulent and destructive on an individual level as any other kind of racism. So let's not be racist. There are many interesting arguments for separatism. But right here in the United States people are already free to enjoy some amount of separatism, if they care enough to look for it. There are black majority colleges, Asian majority cities, whole damn swathes of desert owned by pseudo-sovereign American Indian tribes--what's to be gained from cutting ties with them any further? Wealthy, predominantly white suburbs with good schools and attractive amenities are a real thing, and if you're a white person who can't afford to move to them, that's because you haven't earned a place there, just like the non-whites who complain about the existence of wealthy white suburbs. The problem isn't that CNN is run by a bunch of self-loathing racists (though it is almost certainly true that CNN is run by a bunch of self-loathing racists), the problem is that people can't accept that their problems are almost never the result of systemic anything, and almost always the result of their own internal inclinations and capacities.

I have big, big complaints about the ways we deal with race in the United States, but I do my best to make those complaints from a place of principle--and the principle that governs much of my thinking is that attaching your self-conception or your politics to a group identity instead of to individual merit is stupid. My political enemies are wrong because they think that Blackness and Queerness and Whiteness are important. White identitarians are the poster children of "battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster." They embody everything they think they can destroy. They are often the enemies of my enemies, but the fact that I regard leftist identitarians as a depressing blend of idiocy and mendacity does not make me willing to abandon my principles to join hands with white identitarians. Theirs are not arguments I'm willing to support unconditionally, as soldiers; theirs are arguments I reject for the same reasons I reject leftism.

You can't convince me that white nationalists are right without convincing me that social justice warriors are right, too--and the reverse is also true.

I agree to an extent. The sort of woe is me type ingroup expression is distasteful. But on the other hand there is another angle to that line of argument.

To keep things simple, as an example, be young and try buying a house. Depending on where you live your quality of life is lower than your parents since the price of housing has so dramatically increased. Depending on where you are in the world, to the extent that the price of housing has increased as a result of increased demand, it is in many places primarily an increase due to immigration.

Now what if I allow myself to imagine what my life could have been like if the price of housing had been lower. What would the job market look like if it was not driven on the expectation that an endless stream of foreigners would be there to pick up the slack? Isn't it possible that the life of the average whitey could be better? Not in a comparison to other whites. But just as a general thing. More purchasing power, cleaner streets, less crime. There would still be class stratification, but so what?

In other words, it's not about what you could have in multiracial America, it's about what you could have in monoracial America. It's not about what you could have compared to the Joneses next door, it's what you could have compared to your mirror image in a different America. Because you can have good things in both Americas. But one of them has some very obvious downsides the other one does not have.

To that extent I don't see ethno-national aspirations of a life free of the White Mans Burden to be a whine any more than the aspirations of foreigners who want to live in white countries to be a whine. Those foreigners imagine a better life in the White Mans Backpack. I've never encountered any righteous indignation directed at them, telling them to stop being so envious. "I want more. I deserve more!" Why can't they just accept their lot? Why aspire for an environment where you are more likely to flourish?

And likewise, I agree to an extent. But I feel like the examples you give, and the more complicated ones you didn't give, fall into "just so" stories, narrow selections of what-might-have-been.

For example: by young and try buying a house. "Depending on where you live" is doing a lot of work in your example of price and other pressures. Houses today are bigger and in other ways far more luxurious than they were 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago. Anti-growth environmentalism and government overregulation (including various government subsidies for, especially, first-time home buyers) have far more to do with anyone's housing woes, than immigration. And even so, "Generation Z" is actually tracking as more likely to own a home than their parents were at their age.

Are the streets meaner, crime higher? Well, "depending on where you live," no, for example violent crime has gotten a little worse since the Great Awokening (thanks, Obama!) but is still way down from its peak some 30 years ago. Immigration has probably suppressed some wages, but in the United States the people who seem to be most economically harmed by Hispanic immigration are black Americans who are the next most likely demographic to pick up the manual labor. Oh, sure, maybe some white kid has a harder time getting a good wage at a coding job because the government is handing out H1B visas like Halloween candy, but people have been predicting the total implosion of computer science as a viable career choice for at least two decades that I know of; still doesn't appear to be happening and young white kids with CS degrees are still making a lot more money fresh out of school than, say, me as an educator. There are no solutions--only tradeoffs!

In other words, it's not about what you could have in multiracial America, it's about what you could have in monoracial America.

But what do you lose in a monoracial America? What do other people lose? The identitarian position for white nationalists and black separatists and those who make "stolen land acknowledgments" is always the same: "my people would be better off if everyone else would just submit to our demands!" Well, maybe that's true, but history tells a very different story: trade and liberty (in particular, of movement and commerce) leads to widespread increases in quality of life, in ways that nothing else ever has in all of history. If it is true that white people can be better off, overall, by denying some liberty to non-white people, and non-white people can be better off, overall, by denying some liberty to white people, and both groups set about denying liberty to the other--then the practical result is that neither group is going to be better off in the end, they're just going to constantly be fighting about which group gets to be on top. Better to find intelligent ways to cooperate, than to compete in a zero-sum game (that might not even pan out empirically in the end). Especially since white people are a small and shrinking global minority.

Of course, there is a global ethnic minority that did attempt to build itself an ethnonationalist homeland, and I don't know what history has in store for Israel but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's not "peace in our time." Likewise, casino operation has changed this in some places to some degree, but ethnically pure Indian Reservations are in general riddled with poverty and cultural malaise. Even Japan, arguably a shining beacon of ethnonationalism and certainly an economic powerhouse, is struggling with demographics and economics in ways that are changing their historically xenophobic culture rapidly. There just aren't any positive examples of "purge the undesirables" I can find anywhere in history; the most successful one that comes to mind is the ethnic divorce of Greece and Turkey in the 20th century, and neither of those countries are today places ripe with golden opportunity.

Because you can have good things in both Americas. But one of them has some very obvious downsides the other one does not have.

The other one has some very obvious downsides, too.

Those foreigners imagine a better life in the White Mans Backpack. I've never encountered any righteous indignation directed at them, telling them to stop being so envious. "I want more. I deserve more!" Why can't they just accept their lot? Why aspire for an environment where you are more likely to flourish?

Everyone below a certain reasonable threshold should aspire for an environment where they are more likely to flourish. They just shouldn't aspire to get there by hurting other people. And this is where the identitarians always end up, tweeting ("ironically! to start a dialogue!") about ethnic cleansing of one kind or another. It has been tried, it doesn't work.

I said as much to begin with. This is just imagination land and the examples are broad and not universally applicable, but that's not the point. The point is to get to a place where we can imagine and embrace an instance where less brown people is beneficial to white people and see where that leads instead of traversing weeds and red herrings.

Every counter example you gave relies on immigrants existing in the first place. The political landscape without immigrants is not just different, it's more right wing. On top of that, we are not comparing crime rates against time. I think it's a given crime has been trending downwards with time. We are instead comparing crime rates between people. Blacks have a higher crime rate. Hispanics have a higher crime rate. The societies these people come from have higher crime rates.

The point is not to say that living with browns is unmanageable for whites. Sure, you can get a programming job and live well. But would your lot be better if you did not have to outcompete every brown spud looking for a better life in America? If you did not have to bear the burden of a dysfunctional group of browns. Not just you personally, but every aspect of your environment. Are the news channels talking about some politically relevant thing like where best to place the new bridge or are they talking about black kids not knowing how to read after graduating high school? Are we looking to advance education to help our best and brightest or are the best funded schools filled with illiterates?

Sure, you can pick the examples apart, but I'm kind of relying on you not to. Instead hoping you can recognize that in the places where the examples hold up, the idea of white identitarianism isn't any more or less bad than any idea based on self preservation and the pursuit of happiness. And I think we got to that point given your argument shifted away from a basic pursuit of happiness towards a basic pursuit of happiness without doing harm to others.

This new caveat changes things a bit. Since it's kind of de facto true that any action you take can be construed or contextualized to harm others. And since it's obvious that living with white people is much better for browns than living in their own societies, do we just resign ourselves to the fact that brown people living with white people is a sort of axiomatic right of theirs? To that end, who is keeping score of harm? Because my entire argument to begin with was that the harm goes both ways, which is why I think whites have a case to be made from the standpoint of their own best interest, rather than always considering the white mans burden before making up their mind.

Browns don't want for liberty. They want for white mans liberty. No one is keeping them from emancipating themselves in their own countries. They could reach for the stars if it wasn't for the fact they have to live amongst themselves. I don't disagree with the notion that the white man can carry these browns like he has been doing for decades now. The point is what impact this is having on his back. That's harm. And it's harm caused in the white mans homelands, and he has no place to turn to when it gets damaged beyond repair.

(As a sidenote, I'm ignoring the broad geopolitical 'it can't work' arguments. We all know white societies work just fine. Two distinct nations separated by clear and enforced border can still trade. Japan facing a demographically induced economic downturn is a self correcting problem if you don't flood the country with immigrants to prop up an economy that outscales the native population. Conflating political/moral progressivism with technological advancement is not something I agree with. If you can import people you can deport them. If you can prop them up in your own country you can prop them up in theirs until your conscience tells you you've given enough handouts.)

Hispanics have a higher crime rate. Do they, after controlling for age (per 2020 census, median age was 30, versus 44 for non-Hispanic whites)?

I remember reading articles on the hispanic crime rate and its convergence with the white crime rate. I'm hesitant to believe those reports given the chronic undercounting of hispanics in crime and incarceration in general. https://apps.urban.org/features/latino-criminal-justice-data/

But besides that, if age is a maximally relevant factor it would only start playing a part if the immigration of young people from South America was at some point halted.

I'm hesitant to believe those reports given the chronic undercounting of hispanics in crime and incarceration in general.

But since your first link is re change over time, that is a valid concern only if the rate of undercounting has increased over time. Do you have any reason to think that is true?

But besides that, if age is a maximally relevant factor it would only start playing a part if the immigration of young people from South America was at some point halted. I am not sure what you mean, but if age is the key factor, then your concern should be about age, not race or ethnicity.

The data in that link is still suffering from undercounting. Point being that fluctuations or a convergence with current data would still not impact the truth value of the statement that hispanics commit more crime than whites.

I am not sure what you mean, but if age is the key factor, then your concern should be about age, not race or ethnicity.

It would be both.